Safe. Legal. Rare. Three simple words. On their own, powerless. Devoid of any meaning but their individual Merriam-Webster definitions. But string them together and they become something else entirely.â€śSafe, legal and rare.â€ť A phrase that has been used by abortion advocates since the 1990s. A phrase that admits there is something about abortion that demands its rarity. A phrase that, in its beginning, seeks to ominously remind us of the pre-Roe era, a time period during which abortion advocates claimed women died in droves from back-alley abortions. (The truth is much less macabre.)A phrase that todayâ€™s abortion advocates are tired...

A Northern California couple out walking their dog on their property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $10 million in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree. Nearly all of the 1,427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition, said David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana, which recently authenticated them. Although the face value of the gold pieces only adds up to more than $28,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $1 million apiece. [continued at link]

The Bilderberg Group meet ever year in June, and although the meeting is attended by heads of state, monarchs, heads of media and finance and captains of industry – the meeting is not open to the press and hidden from public view. Needless to say, these transatlantic power-broker Bilderbergers take a vow of secrecy and never leave a paper trail behind – except for the case of George C. McGhee (photo above). Here’s the story posted by Rundown Live, along with documents and photos that many of you might have missed… . Unusual Bilderberg Documents Uncovered at Georgetown University ....

It’s almost upon us. The final eclipse of 2013 occurs this coming weekend on Sunday, November 3rd. This will be the fifth eclipse overall, and the second solar eclipse of 2013. This will also be the only eclipse this year that features a glimpse of totality. This eclipse is of the rare hybrid variety— that is, it will be an annular eclipse along the very first 15 seconds of its track before transitioning to a total as the Moon’s shadow sweeps just close enough to the Earth to cover the disk of the Sun along the remainder of its track....

Jim Kennedy of http://threeconsulting.com/ (ThREE Consulting) on America's shedding of high-tech manufacturing jobs. We focus on projecting power instead of industrial policy. Neglecting both a domestic supply of heavy rare earths, and molten salt reactor (MSR) technology, we guarantee China's future dominance. Jim proposes "Thorium Bank" cooperative as a means of allowing both a domestic supply chain of heavy rare earths (large enough to service global demand), and inexpensive electricity & process heat. This will create American jobs, and stop the hemorrhaging of Intellectual Property into China.

A woman has been hailed a hero after details of her astonishing work with abandoned children has emerged. Lou Xiaoying, now 88 and suffering from kidney failure, found and raised more than 30 abandoned Chinese babies from the streets of Jinhua, in the eastern Zhejiang province where she managed to make a living by recycling rubbish. She and her late husband Li Zin, who died 17 years ago, kept four of the children and passed the others onto friends and family to start new lives. Her youngest son Zhang Qilin - now aged just seven - was found in a...

TOKYO — Japanese high-tech firm Hitachi Wednesday unveiled an electric motor that does not use "rare earths", aiming to cut costs and reduce dependence on imports of the scarce minerals from China. The prototype 11 kilowatt motor does not use magnets containing rare earths and is expected to go into commercial production in 2014, the company said. Hitachi started work on the project on 2008. Other Japanese firms, including automaker Toyota, have been working towards the same goal, spurred on by high prices of the minerals. Permanent magnet motors usually contain rare earth such as neodymium and dysprosium and are...

Washington - Republicans in Congress are launching bids to nullify Obama administration rules that would speed up union elections and set new air pollution standards for the nation's oldest and dirtiest power plants. The rarely used tactic requires a simple majority for passage. Both have a chance at clearing the Senate, but a vote would force some Democrats to take a public stand on two volatile issues in an election year.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A rare November snowfall powdered parts of the U.S. Southeast late Monday and early Tuesday, with as much as eight inches falling on one Arkansas town and some schools closed in Tennessee. Snowfall extended through the mid-Mississippi and Tennessee valleys and as far south as Haleyville, Alabama, said AccuWeather.com meteorologist Alex Sosnowski. Parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi reported between one and three inches of snow, and more flurries were forecast on Tuesday. "It was a surprise to see it this early." said Lesley Hobbs, membership director for the Chamber of Commerce in Paragould,...

A jeweler's heirs are fighting the United States government for the right to keep a batch of rare and valuable "Double Eagle" $20 coins that date back to the Franklin Roosevelt administration. It's just the latest coin controversy to make headlines. Philadelphian Joan Langbord and her sons say they found the 10 coins in 2003 in a bank deposit box kept by Langbord's father, Israel Switt, a jeweler who died in 1990. But when they tried to have the haul authenticated by the U.S. Treasury, the feds, um, flipped. They said the coins were stolen from the U.S. Mint back...

There may be no food more American than the burger. And according to meat lovers, there may be no health code regulation less American than North Carolina's rare and medium rare burger ban. From Winston-Salem to Nags Head, meat eaters are unable to order their burgers rare or even medium rare thanks to a state restriction that requires restaurants to cook ground beef to an internal temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit. That's enough heat to sufficiently kill dangerous bacteria like E. coli, according to state health officials. But it's also enough heat to kill all of the flavor, according to...

KANEOHE BAY, Hawaii – President Barack Obama and his family are making a rare Sunday trip to church. The Obamas arrived at St. Michael's Chapel .. located on the Marine Corps base where Obama frequently golfs .. The Obamas were seated in the first row of the chapel as a band played "Joy to the World" and parishioners clapped. ..

China thinks it can withhold its exports of obscure but important minerals to get its way with its neighbors. Why it picked the wrong weapon.Last week, the New York Times published a stunning story: China, amid a nasty territorial spat with Japan, had quietly halted shipments of rare-earth minerals to its East Asian neighbor, threatening to escalate a skirmish into a full-blown trade war. China swiftly denied the story, while other journalists rushed to confirm it. The Times reported on Sept. 28 that China, while still not admitting the existence of the ban, may be tacitly lifting it -- but...

"China mines 93 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of some of the most prized rare earths .. Japan has been the main buyer of Chinese rare earths for many years, using them for a wide range of industrial purposes, like making glass for solar panels. They are also used in small steering control motors in conventional gasoline-powered cars as well as in motors that help propel hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius. American companies now rely mostly on Japan for magnets and other components using rare earth elements, as...

Backlash over China curb on metal exports China's draconian export curbs on rare earth minerals needed by the rest of the world for frontier technologies is escalating into a serious diplomatic and trade clash with the United States and other leading powers. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor Japan's foreign minister Katsuya Okada issued what amounted to a formal protest at top-level meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing over the weekend, saying the sudden cut-off was "affecting the global production chain". It is the latest sign of rising pressure after angry complaints by companies outside China that rely on this...

Update Aug. 12, 4:15 p.m. ET: The International Meteor Organization reports that hourly rate for Perseid meteors has climbed from the low 20s Tuesday into the 30s on Wednesday and now into the 40s. This represents the number of meteors observable per under perfectly dark skies. While the typical person's actual observation will be lower, the rising rate — fully expected — indicates the peak tonight and Friday morning will indeed be worth viewing, as predicted. — RRB The annual Perseid meteor shower is already putting on an excellent show, and the celestial fireworks have yet to peak. The main...

"Where will we get them? Look at a chart of rare earths production and consumption over the past 50 years, and two trends are immediately clear. The more rare earths the world has consumed, the fewer have been mined here in the United States. In 1985 - before the emergence of the public Internet and in the infancy of the laptop revolution - the U.S. produced half of the world's rare earths supply. By 2000, world production had more than doubled, while the U.S. share dropped below 10 percent. In 2002, U.S. rare earth production dropped to zero, with the...

When Andrew Evans sent us this photo of a rare melanistic penguin that he spotted during his travels, I became intrigued. So I decided to call up Dr. Allan Baker, an ornithologist and professor of Environmental and Evolutionary Studies at the University of Toronto and head of the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum, to learn more about melanism in birds. I got him on the line before he had the chance to look at the photos, and suffice it to say he was slightly flabbergasted at what he saw: "Wow. That looks so bizarre I can't...

A sad story out of Virginia, where a 25-year-old woman, who was training to be a Washington Redskins cheerleader, has come down with a rare neurological disorder days after receiving a seasonal flu vaccination. Now she can hardly walk forward without severe contortions or speak normally. But amazingly, she can walk backwards, run forward and speak just fine as long as she's running. The question is, did the flu shot cause this? Watch the story from Inside Edition: VIDEO AT LINK

Rare Artwork by Mount Rushmore Creator For years, it sat as a paperweight in the home of Jeane Funkhouser. In fact, her daughter, Charlene Mitchell, remembers having to dust under it the entire time she was growing up. It turns out she was dusting under what may be worth millions of dollars. For several decades, the Victoria family has been in possession of an extremely rare Steuben Glass George Washington head created by artist Gutzon Borglum, the man behind the Mount Rushmore sculpture. Funkhouser, also an artist, was given the model as a gift from Borglum's son, Lincoln Borglum, in...

A unique ten-line Aramaic inscription on the side of a stone cup commonly used for ritual purity during Second Temple times was recently uncovered during archaeological excavations on Jerusalem's Mount Zion, The Jerusalem Post learned on Wednesday. Inscriptions of this kind are extremely rare and only a handful have been found in scientific excavations made within the city.

A rare collection of British-made Supersound guitars has been found in the basement of a house in the U.K., according to a report from the BBC. The Supersound brand of guitars resulted from a collaboration between noted British luthiers Jim Burns and Alan Wootton during the late 1950s. Burns, of course, went on to produce guitars played by such notable musicians as Queen’s Brian May, Andy Bell of Oasis, and others. The collection of 12 Supersound guitars appears to be one of the most definitive – and important – examples of a fairly undocumented period of British guitar-making history. “In...

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Archeologists have uncovered carved stucco panels depicting cosmic monsters, gods and serpents in Guatemala's northern jungle that are the oldest known depictions of a famous Mayan creation myth. The newly discovered panels, both 26 feet long and stacked on top of each other, were created around 300 BC and show scenes from the core Mayan mythology, the Popol Vuh. It took investigators three months to uncover the carvings while excavating El Mirador, the biggest ancient Mayan city in the world, the site's head researcher, Richard Hansen, said on Wednesday. The Maya built soaring temples and elaborate...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age has been found nesting on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years, officials said Friday. Four leathery, white eggs from an indigenous tuatara were found by staff at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the capital, Wellington, during routine maintenance work Friday, conservation manager Rouen Epson said. "The nest was uncovered by accident and is the first concrete proof we have that our tuatara are breeding," Epson said. "It suggests that there may be other nests in the sanctuary we don't...

Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq's Jewish community by Saddam Hussein's regime have been secretly spirited into Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday. The books include a 1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, the Haaretz daily said. The volumes are part of a massive collection of books confiscated by the secret police of the executed Iraqi dictator and stored in security installations in the Iraqi capital until the US-led invasion of 2003. Many volumes were damaged during the bombing of government buildings in...

Skull returns to final rest place The skull is believed to be that of a woman in her 50s A rare 2,000-year-old Roman skull has been returned to the cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales where it was discovered by divers in 1996. Archaeologists were called in after cave divers unearthed human bones in what is believed to be one of the most important cave discoveries ever made. The skull dates to the 2nd Century and is that of a local woman in her 50s. It was stored at Sheffield University for carbon-dating and recently returned to the cave, which has...

Rare cave inscriptions By Gamini Mahadura A cave with rare ancient inscriptions dating back to more than 10000 years has reportedly been discovered at Badungala in the PS division of Yakkalamulla in Galle. Archaeology officials say that the inscriptions date back to the Endera yugaya or the era when animals were domesticated. They say similar cave inscriptions had been so far discovered in Alauwa, Ambilikanda and Mawanella. This is the first time that such a find has been reported from the South.

Astronomers Capture Rare Video Of Meteor Falling To Earth; Hunt For Meteorite ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2008) — Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, have captured rare video of a meteor falling to Earth. The Physics and Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in Southern Ontario that scan the sky monitoring for meteors. Associate Professor Peter Brown, who specializes in the study of meteors and meteorites, says that Wednesday evening (March 5) at 10:59 p.m. EST these cameras captured video of a large fireball and the department has also received a number of...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A rare and threatened species of tiny frog has been found breeding in a New Zealand animal park, meaning its future may now be more secure, researchers said Monday. The 13 finger nail-sized Maud Island froglets were discovered clinging to the backs of full-grown male frogs at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the capital Wellington, said researcher Kerri Lukis. The frogs are normally found only on two islands in the Malborough Sounds region of New Zealand's South Island. "Maud Island frogs have never been found breeding" before, even on their home island, said Lukis, a masters...

Rare Egyptian "Warrior" Tomb Found Steven Stanek in Cairo, Egypt for National Geographic NewsFebruary 15, 2008 An unusual, well-preserved burial chamber that may contain the mummy of an ancient warrior has been discovered in a necropolis in Luxor. Scientists opened the tomb—found in Dra Abul Naga, an ancient cemetery on Luxor's west bank—on Wednesday. Inside the burial shaft—a recess crudely carved from bedrock—experts found a closed wooden coffin inscribed with the name "Iker," which translates to "excellent one" in ancient Egyptian. Near the coffin they also found five arrows made of reeds, three of them still feathered. A team of...

Living On 'The Red Edge': Rare Form Of Chlorophyll Discovered In Newly Sequenced BacteriumSea Squirts and sea stars. The Acaryochloris marina lives beneath the sea squirt, which is a marine animal that lives attached to rocks just below the surface of the water. The cyanobacterium absorbs "red edge" light through the tissues of its pal the sea squirt. (Credit: iStockphoto) ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2008) — Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Arizona State University have sequenced the genome of a rare bacterium that harvests light energy by making an even rarer form of chlorophyll, chlorophyll d. Chlorophyll d...

EDMONTON -- Two teams of surgeons in Edmonton delivered a baby while operating on the mother for a life-threatening heart rupture last month. The 36-year-old woman -- who was 35 weeks pregnant -- was airlifted from the Alberta city of Grande Prairie on Jan. 24 with a ruptured aorta - a condition that is fatal 40 per cent of the time without surgery within 48 hours. Grande Prairie is about 460 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. She was taken immediately into an operating room at the University of Alberta while a obstetrical team raced from the nearby Royal Alexandra hospital to...

DALLAS - One of the most famously flawed stamps in U.S. history sold for $825,000 to a New York man who bought it slightly cheaper than the record price another "Inverted Jenny" copy fetched at auction last month. The rare 1918 24-cent stamp, depicting an upside-down Curtis JN-4 biplane known as "Jenny," was sold privately this week to a Wall Street executive who did not want to be identified. Heritage Auction Galleries president Greg Rohan, who brokered the sale, said the buyer is the same collector who lost an auction last month in which another "Inverted Jenny" sold for $977,500....

The moon formed after a nasty planetary collision with young Earth, yet it looks odd next to its watery orbital neighbor. Turns out it really is odd: Only about one in every 10 to 20 solar systems may harbor a similar moon. New observations made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stellar dust clouds suggest that moons like Earth's are—at most—in only 5 to 10 percent of planetary systems. "When a moon forms from a violent collision, dust should be blasted everywhere," said Nadya Gorlova, an astronomer at the University of Florida in Gainesville who analyzed the telescope data in...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2007 – As it has for the past two years to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Pentagon will open its doors Sept. 8 and 9 for brief public tours. The tours, part of Sept. 11 commemorative events that include the Sept. 9 America Supports You Freedom Walk, will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 8 and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 9, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Joshua Hodgin, director of the Pentagon’s tour program, said. America Supports You is a Defense Department program connecting citizens and...

Rare green crystals found in 2,500-year-old tomb (Xinhua) Updated: 2007-07-04 16:43 JING'AN -- Chinese archaeologists exploring a 2,500-year-old tomb in east China's Jiangxi province that contained 47 coffins in a remarkable state of preservation were stunned to discover several pieces of green crystal lodged in the bones of the skeletons in the coffins. One of the diamond-shaped crystals was 8.5 centimeters long. The coffins also contained bronze, gold, silk, porcelain and jade items and even body tissue. Archaeologists said the crystals appeared to have "grown" in the bones. They pointed out that the coffins were made from halved nanmu, a...

NEW YORK - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton took the stage Sunday with her husband, the former president, at a major fundraiser that brought in over $1 million for her presidential campaign. In a Manhattan hotel ballroom filled with New York elected officials and wealthy Democratic donors, Bill Clinton introduced his wife by describing her long career in public service beginning at Yale Law School where the couple met 35 years ago. He said he had encouraged her then to pursue a career in New York or Chicago and is still amazed she followed him back to Arkansas, where he...

BANGKOK, Thailand - The next time you take a Thai Airways flight to China, a passenger with a wingspan of 9.2 feet and a taste for rotting carcasses may also be on board. The country's national carrier announced Wednesday that it will transport a juvenile cinereous vulture to Beijing on March 21 to help return the rare bird to its natural environment in Mongolia. The vulture — normally not found in Thailand — has been nursed back to health by veterinarians at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, after apparently getting lost in late December and ending up dehydrated and near death...

A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 600 metres (2,000 ft) or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week. The Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was alerted by a fisherman at a nearby port on Sunday that he had spotted an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. Marine park staff caught the 1.6 metre (5 ft) long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" because it is a primitive species...

Barre, Vt. — With the drop of a single coin into a Salvation Army holiday collection kettle, the group may have been enriched by as much as $14,000 (U.S.). The donated 1908 Indian head coin has a face value of $2.50, said Captain Louis Patrick. But it's worth at least at $250 and possibly as much as $14,000, according to a preliminary analysis. “I was shocked,” Patrick said. “I've heard of this happening in other places, but I've never actually seen it.” The coin was enclosed in a protective plastic case. “It was an incredibly generous thing to do,” Patrick...

With the elections just a few days away, Republicans continue to scoff at anti-war hunger strikes as “rookie stuff” and have quietly suggested that the anti-war movement should elevate their game if they really want results. “Yeah, the notion of Cindy Sheehan surviving on banana smoothies for a couple days really has us up nights,” said one Bush staffer. “These guys have really got to step it up if they want to be taken seriously. They need to draw on the heritage of their 1960s anti-war predecessors. I’m pretty sure that if the bunch of them set themselves on fire,...

GREENSBURG, Kan. - Scientists located a rare meteorite in a Kansas wheat field thanks to new ground-penetrating radar technology that someday might be used on Mars. The dig Monday was likely the most documented excavation yet of a meteorite find, with researchers painstakingly using brushes and hand tools to preserve evidence of the impact trail and to date the event of the meteorite strike. Soil samples also were bagged and tagged and organic material preserved for dating purposes. Even before they had the meteorite out of the ground, the scientific experts at the site were able to debunk prevailing wisdom...

LONDON (Aug. 7) - A rare photograph of Florence Nightingale went on display Monday to mark the 150th anniversary of the famous nurse's return to Britain from the Crimean War. The faded black-and-white photo, taken in May 1858, shows Nightingale reading on the grounds of her family home in Hampshire, southwest of London. It is one of only eight known photographs of one of nursing's most important figures. She shunned publicity, believing it would detract from her efforts to improve conditions in British hospitals. The photograph, which is going on show at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London, was taken...

Cambridge scholar makes rare 30,000-year-old find Archaeologists have unearthed a pair of tiny bone fragments dating back almost 30,000 years and featuring minute designs carved by some of our earliest European ancestors. The thumbnail-sized bone fragments are engraved with parallel lines and match similar artefacts uncovered in the same area during the 19th century. They were carved by hunter-gatherers as they slowly made their way north in pursuit of moving populations of mammoth and reindeer 25-30,000 years ago. The unusual find was made by a Cambridge scholar, Becky Farbstein, who has been working at Predmosti in north Moravia, in the...